


Running to the End

by hyperbolicfae



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Existential Crisis, F/M, Gen, Implied Relationships, References to Depression, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25601860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyperbolicfae/pseuds/hyperbolicfae
Summary: Shepard died and now has to learn to live again. Snapshots of the highlights and lowlights of ME2.
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard, Thane Krios/Female Shepard
Kudos: 9





	Running to the End

She was dying, but she was okay with that. She looked out as the last of the Normandy exploded, eclipsing the stars with its fire before the vacuum of space extinguished it. Her heart broke, and tears froze on her skin, but

it

was

so _beautiful._

***

Two years. Died and rebuilt. She wouldn't have believed it save for the glow of her cybernetics; red light pouring through cracks in her raw skin. Miranda had said she wasn’t finished yet. Still undone from dying.

Shepard rubbed the fog off her bathroom mirror and squinted at her reflection.

She was supposed to be the same.

She would never be again. She slid her hand between her breasts, resting it on top of her heart.

She had a job to do.

***

Being with Garrus again was so easy, almost like nothing had changed. It almost made her feel human again. He was an ugly motherfucker, worse now, but he always made her laugh. He saw her as Shepard, and it was almost enough to make her believe it.

Almost.

***

Horizon was a shitshow. If she was still navy, still human, her failure would deserve nothing less than … Well, she wasn’t. Not either of those things.

She remembered the night before Ilos, and Kaidan warm and strong in her bed. The blistering tension between them before that.

She thought she’d loved him. Thought he knew her best. But if Kaidan was right about her now... She grit her teeth. Didn’t matter. Her humanity, or lack of, wasn’t going to bring those civvies back.

***

Afterlife’s music pounded through her skin and shook her heart. Shepard drowned in the feeling and revelled in the pull of fathomless eyes peering straight into her soul. For an instant, Shepard almost said yes to Morinth. For an instant, she wanted to die still feeling alive.

***

She’d died. She’d come back. She’d come back different. Thane accepted this with a nod of his head like it was an inescapable truism of nature. Shepard felt like she could breathe again. When he held her hand she could almost remember how everything felt before. In his stillness, Shepard found harbor against her storm.

***

Of course her son would be born in a tank. Of course he’d be an overgrown Krogan terror. Cheeky bastard, too. As he strode around camp with his trophy, part of the thresher’s head, Shepard couldn’t have been prouder.

***

The Collectors took them, her entire crew. Thane thought of her as an avenging angel, but he was only half right. The fuckers took Shepard’s own and it would not stand, and they wouldn’t live to regret it. The red in her eyes didn’t bother her, not anymore.

***

Millions, maybe billions dead. So many that the numbers were staggering, incomprehensible; men, women, children, slaves. An entire fucking colony gone to stop the advance, to buy them just a few more months. Shepard felt time run out like sand through her fingers, and couldn’t make herself regret it.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been writing this on and off since a few months after the release of ME2. The first blurb doesn’t feel quite like my style, but I couldn’t find it in another fic. If you recognize it, please let me know so I can remove it.


End file.
